I'm Feeling Lucky

I read this book, which, as the cover proudly proclaims, is written by Google's employee #59. Pretty interesting, and with a few insights into how Google thinks about user privacy and its key credo of "Don't be Evil". An entertaining read, overall (not least because it describes the romantic shenanigans between Marissa Mayer, Yahoo's new and very pregnant CEO, and Larry Page), and it all works out well for the author, who cleaned out (per my calculation) close to $200m in 4 years between joining Google and its IPO!

However, for all the talk about privacy, I was rudely shocked today. I usually use Chrome as my default browser. Today I was checking a few travel sites for flights between Ahmedabad and Chennai. Now, generally browsing some news site, I get an ad from Make My Trip served up on the page, saying something like "Now, fly from Ahd to Che only at INR abc".

This is spooky. Clearly, Google is tracking data of what I'm doing on the browser. More heinously, it is selling this info to random websites (or at least using it to serve up 'relevant' ads to me). I'm not sure if I appreciate this. This sounds very much like Big Brother to me.

I wonder what all Google knows about me. Pretty much everything - my bank account, my passwords, my bank balance, what i shop for, who i email, where i travel, what i do!! This is nuts!